Small Details In The Big Game Avengers: Endgame Trailer You Missed
The newest trailer for Avengers: Endgame hit in the early minutes of Super Bowl LIII. And for most fans watching what turned out to be one of the more mediocre Big Games in recent memory, it was probably one of the few actual highlights of the night. The only real complaint we have about the 30-second spot? It just wasn't long enough.
Still, with such a short running time, the trailer was still packed with details and moments that seemed to hide plenty of significance. While we can't know for sure what any of these scenes might truly mean until the movie comes out in late April, we can definitely make some educated (or not-so-educated) guesses. After all, what's more fun than making bold and ridiculous predictions about a movie based on basically no evidence? A typical trip to Reddit on any given day will prove that the answer is "nothing." Here, then, are some of the small details in the Big Game's Avengers: Endgame trailer that you might've missed. Potential spoilers ahead.
A tribute to fallen friends...or a clue of things to come?
First, the trailer runs through ten shots of MCU characters. Who's in this blink-and-you'll-miss-it lineup? Starting at the top, we see the Wasp; Nick Fury; Spider-Man; Doctor Strange; Falcon; Scarlet Witch; Star-Lord, Groot, Drax, Gamora, and Rocket; Black Panther and a couple members of the Dora Milaje; the Winter Soldier; and the Vision. With the exception of Rocket, and maybe those two guards sharing the scene with T'Challa, all of these characters were killed in Infinity War, either after the Decimation, or directly at Thanos's hands.
At first, it seems that these images simply pay tribute to the characters who died in the previous movie. But there might be more going on here. All the scenes are rendered in black-and-white...and red. Symbolically, red can represent life and death, being easily associated with blood — you know, the stuff you need to keep inside your body to not die. But this is a trailer for a movie involving Infinity Stones — and the red one's the Reality Stone. There's been tons of speculation that time travel will factor into the plot of Avengers: Endgame. But could these red-hued shots actually signify that the Reality Stone will be the key to their resurrection? Who needs time travel if you can just ask the Reality Stone to make some dead people alive again? We also see Clint Barton bathed in red light in the trailer. Let's put this theory in the "maybe" category.
What's going on at Liberty Island?
The trailer opens with a shot of the Statue of Liberty. While that's usually a powerful symbol in film, standing for freedom or America in general, the details surrounding the statue are what seem to be most significant. It doesn't take long to realize that something looks off about the area surrounding Liberty Island — it's practically choked with boats and ships. For those of you who may not stare lovingly at photos of Liberty Island every day, you may not realize that this isn't something that happens often... or really ever.
Compare the shot in the trailer, pictured above, to this photo of Liberty Island on a typical day. As you can see, the amount of boats docked there goes from "a whole lot" to "exactly zero." The implication here seems to be the utter desolation Thanos' snap from the end of Avengers: Infinity War has caused on the rest of the world. People are fleeing their home cities — now probably rendered completely broken due to half the population blinking out of existence — and are heading toward New York for refuge. The image we get in the trailer makes sense, too, since the decimation probably destroyed air travel throughout the world. Half the world's pilots and air traffic controllers are gone, right? So instead, people are getting on boats and sailing toward the most easily identifiable port of entry they can find: the giant green lady holding a torch right outside Manhattan.
Stark and Nebula getting to work
In a brief but significant moment from the trailer, we see Tony Stark and Nebula working together on... something. The last time we saw those two, it seemed like they were stranded in space together on the Benatar, the spaceship owned by the currently dusted super-team known as the Guardians of the Galaxy. Stark was recording a sad message for his lady love, Pepper Potts, while Nebula was just creeping through the ship. It was implied, but not explicitly shown, that the two of them were together on their long journey away from Titan — presumably back to Earth.
Now, however, we get a clear glimpse of the two of them side-by-side, working on...well, again, we still don't know what it is, since it's out of frame. But we can hazard a few guesses. It could be repairs to the ship, which would enable it to get wherever they're going more quickly. Maybe they're working on fixing up a suit of Iron Man armor, which got busted in the fight against Thanos. Or maybe it's some other thing we don't know about! Either way, the most important revelation here is that we know for sure Stark and Nebula are putting their skills together to figure out how not to die in the cold, cold vacuum of space.
Addition through subtraction
There are a couple of scenes in the trailer that are conspicuous because of what we don't see. As we know by now, movie trailers may show us previews of what we'll see when the movie arrives. But they'll just as often fudge the scenes they depict in order to keep surprises at a maximum. The trailer for Infinity War showed Hulk running behind the rest of the Avengers in Wakanda... and we all know now that Hulk never showed up during that fight scene in the finished film.
The new trailer for Endgame could be pulling the same switcheroo. Early in the trailer, we see a shot of Black Widow, Captain America, Bruce Banner, and War Machine walking outside Avengers headquarters — with a big old blank space where a fifth character would seem to fit easily. Another shot later shows the Avengers in profile, lined up — with yet another space for an apparently missing character. If we assume that this is an example of Marvel misdirecting our attention to keep certain spoilers offscreen, who could these missing characters be?
Hulk and Potts: Rescue Rangers
If we believe these open spaces point to some hidden characters, there are a few distinct possibilities for who Marvel might be keeping under wraps. We know Hawkeye is back in action in Endgame, as he shows up at another point in the trailer, so it seems unlikely that he'd have been erased from these scenes. But we still haven't caught sight of the Incredible Hulk — even though we have seen Banner. Could the Hulk have been separated from Banner in this movie? Or maybe the Hulk is only one of the missing characters out of the two Avengers group shots — the lineup, specifically.
We also know that Gwyneth Paltrow will be in Avengers: Endgame to reprise her role as Pepper Potts, as she once posted an image of herself wearing a motion capture getup. It's not crazy to believe that Potts will take on the role of Rescue, an identity she's taken on in the comics while wearing one of Stark's suits of Iron Man armor. Seeing Potts in an Avengers group shot would be a huge spoiler, so it makes sense that Marvel might want to keep that particular plot beat under its hat. However, there's an even likelier person to have been erased from the trailer...
A Marvelous trip to Maine
It's very, very likely that the missing hero is Captain Marvel, whose debut movie is set to hit theaters about a month before Avengers: Endgame drops. We know from the end of Infinity War that Captain Marvel will be important in this new film, since her logo appears on Nick Fury's pager just before he gets dusted. But what other presence does Captain Marvel have in this new trailer? Surprisingly, the answer is lobsters.
Yes, that's right: lobsters.
In one of the few shots of Rocket, the only surviving member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, seems to reveal a couple of interesting details about his possible location. He opens up an old wooden door, with a shot of a rocky shore behind him, along with a couple of lobster traps. So what, right? Well, most of the country's lobsters come from Maine... and according to The Life of Captain Marvel comic book miniseries from 2018, Carol Danvers considers Harpswell, Maine, her home away from home. Meanwhile, the character's fictional biography has her born in Boston, a New England location that could certainly have a few lobster traps lying around as well. In either case, when you add in the fact that Captain Marvel is a spacefaring hero, and Rocket the alien raccoon seems to be the character hanging out on the beach, it seems clear that Marvel's hinting at Captain Marvel's impending arrival to save the day.
Where's Thor?
Thor's whereabouts leave us with a lot more guesswork than Rocket's. We only get a couple of solo shots of the Thunderer in the trailer: one's a close-up of his face, while the next shot shows him in silhouette at the mouth of some sort of cave or structure. In the distance we see the green of trees, and what looks like a hill or a mountain. The cave mouth itself seems unnatural, and potentially man-made. So...where is he?
There are a number of possibilities. But like guessing what Stark and Nebula are up to, all we can do is speculate wildly. The colors of the landscape seem to look a bit like Wakanda. The cave, likewise, could be some kind of base of operations for the Dora Milaje — we know Okoye was left alive at the end of Infinity War, even if the continued existence of T'Challa's sister, Shuri, is in doubt.
Perhaps, however, this shot comes from wherever Thanos ended up on at the end of Infinity War. The cave mouth — or maybe spaceship — doesn't seem familiar at first glance, and we don't yet know enough about where Thanos retired. But plot-wise, it makes a lot of sense for Thor to visit his former foe, so he could retrieve the Infinity Gauntlet and undo Thanos' damage. Of course, we know that it got fried right after the snap in the last movie, so the sad look on his face could indicate a dead end.
Ant-Man and War Machine make up
When James "War Machine" Rhodes and Scott "Ant-Man" Lang last met, it was as enemies in Captain America: Civil War. The two characters took up opposite sides of the superheroic conflict, and we've never seen them interact as anything other than enemies. In fact, Ant-Man and Captain America basically threw a truck filled with gasoline at the guy. Needless to say, the two of them didn't have the kind of introduction that makes for friendship.
However, we know for sure that both characters will have important parts to play in Endgame — especially when Ant-Man drives up in his Ant-Van at the end of the first trailer Marvel Studios released for the film. The new trailer doesn't give us much, but we do see the pair standing side-by-side, getting suited up and ready for action. It stands to reason that whatever beef they had has been sufficiently squashed — at least until reality and/or the timeline gets reset by the end of the movie.
Wielding the shield
Captain America is pretty inextricably linked to his famous shield. But believe it or not, he hasn't held the thing up since the end of Captain America: Civil War. He was rocking a different shield entirely in Infinity War — sort of a triangular, black buckler that was provided by T'Challa in Wakanda.
But in this new trailer for Endgame, we get a shot of what seems to be the inside of Captain America's classic shield. The circumstances of him reclaiming this weapon are a big question mark. Last time we saw it was when he threw it at Tony Stark's feet after the two of them finished fighting in Civil War. Maybe Cap swung by Tony's empty penthouse to pick it up? Or maybe this is yet more grist for the mill when it comes to the constant time travel theories that continue to follow this movie. Regardless of how he gets his hands on it, everyone knows that when Captain America throws his mighty shield, all those who chose to oppose must yield.
The Great Depression
Among the many early shots we get in the trailer, there's one that should stand out to at least a particular subset of Marvel fans — Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, seems totally empty and sad. The next shot we see is of a support group meeting, along with a very sad-looking Steve Rogers apparently in attendance. What are we to take from these shots being clustered together?
To start, let's make an inference about Steve's sports team preferences: having grown up in Brooklyn in the '30s and '40s, he would've undoubtedly been a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. When the team moved to Los Angeles in 1957, Captain America was frozen in ice, meaning he couldn't follow his hometown team across the country. Meanwhile, many New York-based Dodgers fans pledged their allegiance to the Mets when they debuted in the neighboring New York borough of Queens in 1962. So it stands to reason that Steve Rogers is a Mets fan... one apparently filled with sadness, an emotion that's pretty familiar to most Mets fans.
What's even more interesting is that one of the Mets' star pitchers in our reality is a guy named Noah Syndergaard, who's earned the nickname of "Thor," both because of his dominance on the mound and his long blond locks. If nothing else, this shot of Citi Field is an example of some great cross-brand promotion. Don't be surprised if the end of the movie features a stadium full of cheering fans, Syndergaard on the mound, with Steven and the real Thor catching a game.